PhillySound: new poetry

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Ronald Palmer responds to both questions...

QUESTION #1

I graduated from NYU's MA in Creative Writing, which turned into anMFA program, but when I was there in the early 90s you still had totake linguistics and lit courses and pass a translation exam inanother language of your choosing. I must say that I felt VERYintimidated because right off the bat I felt inferior due to the factthat I was the only student in my class who was accepted who did notgraduate from an IVY league school...or some top notch university; onevery sweet woman actually said: "I've never met anyone who went to astate school before!"....Luckily, Michael S. Harper was the teacher atthe time and he blurted out "I went to a state school!".There was a sense of competition for attention of the teacher. Thiswas certainly student generated. I was so young! (only 23 when Ientered the program, so that's 15 years ago) and naturally most youngwriters want to be nurtured and admired and told that their writing isworth something. For the most part, I found the program, theprofessors and the other students very helpful and encouraging. Wewere encouraged to say both critical comments and explicit praise(what was working, what wasn't working in the poem). In the end, Ithink it did help me writing and make the fire in my belly grow. Iwanted to publish and I wanted to make my poems better. Some peoplefrom the program did not continue writing and got corporate jobs orediting jobs; others became quite well known within 10 years fromwinning highly publicized contests or from their manuscripts beingpicked up at well established small presses. I sent my manuscript offto contests several times before Soft Skull contracted Logicalogics in2003. It went through many incarnations...."Becoming a Queer Saint" ;"The Logic of Orange" etc...and truthfully I think it does take 10-15years to put a first collection together (on average) post-grad schoolor otherwise. I certainly don't think a poet needs an MFA to be asuccessful writer or to win a contest for that matter, but theMA/MFA/Workshops help a poet refine his/her craft, learn how to edithis/her own work, hear him/herself read the work outloud to others,*which really helps a great deal* and to develop that elusive "innervoice" or "writer's voice" that is supposed to magically appear fromthe practice writing. I've heard so many writers say this before me,but I really think it's so true: reading is the best way to betterwriting. And I mean Philosophy, History, Letters of "Enter FavoriteDead Writer's Name Here", Biographies, Novels and yes poetry:especially to see what's being published currently in the journals andfrom the presses. Sometimes fine tuned manuscripts will continue tomake it to the final round time and time again, yet not be chosen dueto the subject matter, the craft, the experimentation of thepunctuation, the pornography, etc...or the judge knew who s/he wasgoing to pick before they received the finalists package, which ismore common than one would like to admit.CRUSH, by Richard Siken (sp?), which was chosen by Louise Gluck forThe Yale Younger Poets award this year, is absolutely brilliant (in myhumble opinion) and it's a miracle that she chose it because it is astrange and risky book. I highly recommend it! Anyway, I hope I'vetouched on some of the questions in #1. If I were 23 again and NYUaccepted my for their M/F/A program, I would most definitely take thewhole crazy trip again; I might not have wasted the contest moneyuntil I really believed the thing was finished. In some ways, I wasjust sending it to contests as practice, you know, to see if I couldactually finish a 48-60 page mss.

Question #2

No I don't think it's unethical that WW wrote his own reviews under apsedonym and I think we should do it too! hee hee. You gotta get yourbook some publicity...but I think it wouldn't work as effectivelybecause there's like so many more outlets and so many moredistractions.xoxoxRon